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Medicine, Race and the General Good: The Career of Thomas N G Te Water (1857–1926), South African Doctor and Medical Politician

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Anne Digby
Anne Digby
Affiliation:
School of Humanities, Centre for Health, Medicine and Society, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane Campus, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK.
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Information
Medical History , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , 01 January 2007 , pp. 37 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2007. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 K Thomas, Changing conceptions of national biography: the Oxford DNB in historical perspective, Leslie Stephen Memorial Lecture, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

2 Editorial ‘Introduction’ to M Shortland and R Yeo (eds), Telling lives in science: essays on scientific biography, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 6, 15, 29, 31.

3 R J Cooter, ‘The rise and decline of the medical member: doctors and parliament in Edwardian and interwar Britain’, Bull. Hist. Med., 2004, 78 (1): 59–107, on pp. 85–6, 93, 96–7.

4 R Macleod, ‘Colonial doctors and national myths: on telling lives in Australian medical biography’, in M Sutphen and B Andrews (eds), Medicine and colonial identity, London, Routledge, 2003, pp. 125–42, on pp. 136, 126.

5 Dictionary of South African Biography (hereafter DSAB), 5 vols, Pretoria, Human Sciences Research Council, 1987, vol. 5, pp. 766–7.

6 M W Swanson, ‘The sanitation syndrome: bubonic plague and urban native policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–1909’, J. Afr. Hist., 1977, 18: 387–410; E van Heyningen, ‘Agents of empire: the medical profession in the Cape Colony, 1880–1910’, Med. Hist., 1989, 33: 450–71; E van Heyningen, ‘Public health and society in Cape Town, 1880–1910’, PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 1989; R M Packard, White plague, black labor: tuberculosis and the political economy of health and disease in South Africa, Pietermaritzburg, University of Natal Press, 1990; E Katz, The white death: silicosis on the Witwatersrand gold mines, 1886–1910, Johannesburg, University of Witwatersand Press, 1994; K Jochelson, The colour of disease: syphilis and racism in South Africa, 1880–1950, London, Palgrave, 2001.

7 J T B Collins, ‘John Max Mehliss, M.D., a Transvaal medical pioneer’, S. Afr. med. J., 29 June 1983: 14–16; P Hadley (ed.), Doctor to Basuto, Boer and Briton, 1877–1906: memoirs of Dr Henry Taylor, Cape Town, David Philip, 1972; N Mathie, Man of many facets: Dr W. G. Atherstone, 1814–1898, pseudo-autobiography, 3 vols, Grahamstown, Grocott & Sherry, 1997–8; L Bean and E van Heyningen (eds), The letters of Jane Elizabeth Waterston 1866–1905, Cape Town, Van Riebeeck Society, 1983; I Colvin, The life of Jameson, London, E Arnold, 1922; J Carruthers (ed.), The Jameson raid: a centennial retrospective, Johannesburg, Brenthurst Press, 1996.

8 H Deacon, H Phillips and E van Heyningen (eds), The Cape doctor in the nineteenth century: a social history, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2004.

9 J D Ellis, The physician-legislators of France: medicine and politics in the early Third Republic, 1870–1914, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 3, 10, 79, 239–41.

10 N Worden, E van Heyningen, V Bickford-Smith, Cape Town: the making of a city, Cape Town, David Philip, 1997, p. 223.

11 Van Heyningen, ‘Agents of empire’, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 464–5.

12 A Digby, Diversity and division in medicine: healthcare in South Africa from the 1800s, Oxford and Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2006, table 1.2; C H Feinstein, An economic history of South Africa: conquest, discrimination and development, Cambridge University Press, 2005, table A1.1.

13 Thomas N G Te Water, MB, CM Edinburgh, 1879; MD, London, 1881.

14 Harriet Deacon, ‘Introduction: the Cape doctor in the nineteenth century’, in Deacon, et al. (eds), op. cit., note 8 above, pp. 17–43, on p. 21.

15 H Phillips, ‘Home taught for abroad: the training of the Cape doctor, 1807–1910’, in H Deacon, et al. (eds), op. cit., note 8 above, pp. 105–132.

16 Deacon, op. cit., note 14 above, above, p. 23.

17 See, for example, the presidential addresses to the first and second medical congresses in South Africa, in BMA presidential addresses, 1888–1908, Cape Town, BMA, 1908, pp. 2–4.

18 H J Deacon, ‘Cape Town and “country” doctors in the Cape Colony during the first half of the nineteenth century’, Soc. Hist. Med., 1997, 10: 25–52.

19 Union government papers, UG 32-912, Union Census, 1911, part V, occupations, pp. 706–7.

20 T S Pensabene, The rise of the medical practitioner in Victoria, Canberra, Australian National University, 1980, pp. 74, 80.

21 Database from Cape Medical Council records of licensing for medical practice compiled by Elizabeth van Heyningen.

22 E H Burrows, A history of medicine in South Africa, Cape Town, A A Balkema, 1958, pp. 187–8, 185–6.

23 Dr C F K Murray, ‘Presidential address’, S. Afr. med. Rec., 1910, 8: 260–1; A Digby, ‘“A medical El Dorado?” Colonial medical incomes and practice at the Cape’, Soc. Hist. Med., 1995, 8: 463–79, on pp. 464–71.

24 A Digby, ‘Making a medical living: the economics of medical practice in the Cape, c.1860–1910’, in Deacon, et al. (eds), op. cit., note 8 above, pp. 249–79, on p. 252.

25 Van Heyningen database of Cape licensed doctors; The Medical and Pharmacy Register for the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Town, Richards, 1893; South African Medical Directory, Cape Town, Cape Times, 1896 and 1914.

26 S. Afr. med. J., 1888, 3: 165. There were three sets of the South African Medical Journal: the first running from 1884 to 1889, the second from 1893 to 1898, and the third from 1927 onwards. The South African Medical Record ran from 1903 to 1926.

27 Digby, ‘“A medical El Dorado?”’, op. cit., note 23 above, pp. 463–79.

28 Obituary, S. Afr. med. Rec., 13 Nov. 1926; Packard, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 39.

29 Cape Archives, Cape Town, Te Water collection, A467/84, visit and prescription book, 1881–7, folio 39. The prescription books in the practice are effectively case books rather than prescription books.

30 A467/84, visit book, 1881–7.

31 A467/85/1, prescription book, 1888–94.

32 A467/85/2, day book, 1899.

33 A467/62, letter from S Cox of Mawson and Thomson of London, 4 July 1895; A467/85/2, day book entry, 11 Apr. 1899.

34 Cape government papers, A6-1890, Report of the Select Committee on the Medical Practitioners Bill, Q. 355, evidence of Dr Herman of Cape Town; A467/85/2, prescription book, 1894–7; Cape Medical Museum, BMA Grahamstown Division minutes 1906–7, letter of 13 Jan. 1908 from Colonial Secretary.

35 A Digby, The evolution of British general practice, 1850–1948, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 205.

36 A467/85/2, day book entry, 25 Aug. 1899.

37 Editorial in S. Afr. med. Rec., Nov. 1904, 2.

38 P Starr, The social transformation of American medicine, New York, Basic Books, 1982, pp. 69–71; Digby, General practice, op. cit., note 35 above, pp. 144–51.

39 A467/62, telegram 28 Sept. 1883.

40 A467/85/2, day book entry, 1899.

41 A de V Minnaar, Graaff-Reinet, 1786–1996, Pretoria, Human Sciences Research Council, 1987, p. 29; A467/52, Fourth report of Midland Hospital, 1880.

42 A Digby, Making a medical living, Cambridge University Press, 1994, ch. 6.

43 A467/62, letter of 10 Dec. 1881 from P M Q.

44 A467/62, letters of 1 May, 19 Sept. and 23 Feb. 1882 from A S; H P; and E H R E.

45 A467/62, letters of 13 Sept. and 19 July 1882 from C J S and J A H, and of 1 Mar. 1895 from T C S.

46 A467/62, letter of 23 Feb. from E E.

47 A467/62, letter of 15 July 1888 from D J L.

48 A462/62, letter of 8 Dec. 1889 from C F G R.

49 Letter from Dr W C Scholtz of Cape Town to S. Afr. med. J., 1894–5, 2–3: 307–8.

50 Digby, Medical living, op. cit., note 42 above, pp. 51, 168–9.

51 S. Afr. med. Rec., 1887, 4: 69; S. Afr. med. J., 1897–8, p. 38.

52 Digby, Medical living, op. cit., note 42 above, p. 125; Digby, ‘“A medical El Dorado?”’, op. cit., note 23 above, p. 477.

53 A467/85/1, prescription book, 1888–94, folio 157b, Widow R.

54 A467/91/1, slip signed by F de Klerk for payment for man and child at the Maudsley Hotel.

55 A467/89, receipts.

56 A467/62, letter of 20 March 1883 from J T S.

57 A467/89, receipts and licences.

58 A467/91/1, papers relating to office as district surgeon; A467/89, receipts; Digby, Medical living, op. cit., note 42 above, ch. 5.

59 A467/85/2, receipts, Apr.–Sept. 1899; Cape government papers, G49-1909 Cape of Good Hope report of Commissioner of Taxes, 1908–9. For a discussion of the Cape doctor's finances see Digby, ‘“A medical El Dorado?”, op. cit., note 23 above, pp. 478–9, and idem, ‘Making a medical living’, op. cit., note 24 above, pp. 249–80.

60 S Dubow, Land, labour and merchant capital in the pre-industrial rural economy of the Cape, University of Cape Town, Centre for African Studies, 1982, p. 3; Minnaar, op. cit., note 41 above, p. 151.

61 UG 54-1937, Report on Cape coloured population, paragraphs 508, 512, 523–4.

62 A467/62, bill dated Jan. 1890.

63 Digby, Diversity and division in medicine, op. cit., note 12 above, pp. 345–63, 371–2.

64 Hadley (ed.), op. cit., note 7 above, pp. 34–5; J B Knobel, ‘Some remarks on the professional experiences of a general medical practitioner in Pretoria, Transvaal’, MD thesis, University of Glasgow, 1902, p. 24. Taylor practised mainly in Ficksburg in the Orange Free State, and Knobel mainly in Pretoria in the Transvaal.

65 Minnaar, op. cit., note 41 above, p. 45.

66 A467/62, letter to Te Water, 6 July 1894.

67 C H Hudson, CM, MD, Edinburgh.

68 A467/62, letters, 9 Dec. 1898, 8 Apr. 1899.

69 A467/94, minutes and correspondence, figures for 1896.

70 D Porter, Health, civilisation and the state: a history of public heath from ancient to modern times, London, Routledge, 1999, p. 146.

71 A467/91/1, newspaper cuttings.

72 P W Laidler and M Gelfand, South Africa: its medical history, 1652–1898, Cape Town, Struik, 1971, pp. 454–60.

73 E van Heyningen, ‘The social evil in the Cape Colony, 1868–1902: prostitution and the Contagious Diseases Acts’, J. Southern Afr. Stud., 1984, 10 (2): 170–97, pp. 174–5, 178.

74 A467, correspondence, 1897–1905.

75 Cape official papers, G4-1889, Reports of district surgeons on Public Health, pp. 47–9.

76 G5-1891, ibid., 1890, p. 36.

77 G5-1891, ibid., p. 36; A467, correspondence, 1897–1905 for draft statement on leprosy.

78 J W Matthews, Incwadi Yami; or twenty years personal experience in South Africa, Johannesburg, Africana Book Society, 1976, pp. 343, 351.

79 Van Heyningen, ‘The social evil’, op. cit., note 73 above, p. 195.

80 J H Hofmeyr or “Onze Jan” (1845–1909) represented Stellenbosch in the House of Assembly (1879–1895) but, on the grounds of poor health, held cabinet rank only for a brief interval in 1881. However, he had immense influence as the acknowledged leader of the Bond, where he displayed great tactical skill in complex political manoeuvres (DSAB, 1972, vol. 2, pp. 314–19). Hofmeyr continued to be Te Water's political mentor as when Te Water sought his friend's advice before accepting ministerial office in Sprigg's ministry in 1896.

81 M Tamarkin, Cecil Rhodes and the Cape Afrikaners: the imperial colossus and the colonial parish pump, London, Frank Cass, 1996, pp. 135–7; A Thomas, Rhodes, London, BBC Books, 1996, pp. 167–8.

82 Tamarkin, op. cit., note 81 above, pp. 186–7, 243–4.

83 Minnaar, op. cit., note 41 above, pp. 153–3.

84 Tamarkin, op. cit., note 81 above, pp 212–17; M Tamarkin, ‘The Cape Afrikaners and the British empire from the Jameson raid to the South African War’, in D Lowry (ed.), The South African War reappraised, Manchester University Press, 2000, pp. 121–39, on p. 128; Thomas, op. cit., note 81 above, pp. 265–72.

85 Tamarkin, op. cit., note 84 above, p. 127.

86 R Davenport and C Saunders, South Africa: a modern history, 5th ed., Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2000, p. 230; B Nasson, The South African War, 1899–1902, London, Arnold, 1999, p. xi.

87 Minnaar, op. cit., note 81, pp. 14, 39.

88 A467/91/1, speech following the Bond victory in the Graaff-Reinet divisional elections of Nov. 1888.

89 A467/88, newspaper cuttings, 1888–96.

90 Burrows, op. cit., note 22 above, pp. 110, 129, 154–5; van Heyningen, ‘Public Health’, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 98–9.

91 Mathie, op cit., note 7 above, vol. 2, pp. 437–9, vol. 3, 817–19; Burrows, op. cit., note 22 above, p. 173.

92 K Wyndham Smith, From frontier to Midlands: a history of the Graaff-Reinet district, 1786–1910, Occasional Paper 20, Grahamstown, ISER, Rhodes University, 1976, pp. 85, 91, 100, 337–41.

93 G1-1894, Report of the Scab Disease Commission, 1892–4, inter alia, evidence of F L McCabe, scab inspector for the Graaff-Reinet district, pp. 147–79.

94 Tamarkin, op. cit., note 81 above, pp. 206–10.

95 E A Walker, W. P. Schreiner, Oxford University Press, 1937, p. 116; DSAB, vol. 5, pp. 766–7.

96 Walker, op. cit., note 95 above, pp. 34, 105, 109–10.

97 Quoted in Tamarkin, op. cit., note 81 above pp. 283–4.

98 T R H Davenport, The Afrikaner Bond: the history of a South African political party, 1880–1911, Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1966, pp. 216–20; DSAB, vol. 5, pp. 766–7; Walker, op. cit., note 95 above, pp. 117–19, 225, 231–3; Davenport and Saunders, op. cit., note 86 above, p. 228.

99 Davenport, op. cit., note 98 above, p. 248.

100 A467/94, minutes and correspondence; Laidler and Gelfand, op. cit., note 72 above, p. 451.

101 A467/95/2, telegram books of Colonial Secretary. Permissive legislation had first been enacted in 1886 and vigorous discussion had occurred ever since then over its suitability for different ecological areas.

102 Laidler and Gelfand, op. cit., note 72 above, p. 490.

103 F Swanson, ‘“Of unsound mind”: a history of three Eastern Cape mental institutions, 1875–1910’, MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 2001, pp. 112–30.

104 A46795/2, telegram of 28 Aug. 1897 to Te Water.

105 Tamarkin, op. cit., note 84 above, pp. 133–5.

106 Davenport, op. cit., note 98 above, p. 234.

107 B J Barker, A concise dictionary of the Boer War, Cape Town, Francolin, 1999, p. 63.

108 Van Heyningen, ‘The social evil’, op. cit., note 73 above, p. 196.

109 A467/73, typescript of answers to commission, questions 83,868–74 and 83,933–44.

110 UG 34-1914 Report of the Tuberculosis Commission, p. 17.

111 Diamond Field Advertiser, 17 May 1913. J E Mackenzie, CM, MD, Edinburgh. He was the son of John Mackenzie, a notable member of the London Missionary Society.

112 A467/73, question 91,948.

113 A Digby, ‘“Bridging two worlds”: the migrant labourer and medical change in Southern Africa’, in R Cohen (ed.), Migration and health in Southern Africa, Cape Town, Struik, 2003, pp. 18–20; Packard, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 92–102; F Wilson, Migrant labour in South Africa, Johannesburg, South African Council of Churches, 1972, p. 183.

114 A467/73, question 92,024.

115 UG 34-1914, page 152, paragraph 273.

116 UG 34-1914, chapter X, where each commissioner stated an individual view of TB's infectiousness.

117 Laidler and Gelfand, op. cit., note 72 above, pp. 442–3, 453, 469.

118 UG 34-1914, addendum, 3 June 1914; Packard, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 202.

119 S. Afr. med. Rec., 12 Sept. 1924, quoted in Packard, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 351, note 18.

120 Packard, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 201–3. See also Katz, op. cit., note 6 above, p. 103, note 26 on p. 223, note 28 on p. 235. For discussion of belief in racial disease paradigms by the medical profession see Jochelson, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 24–9.

121 ‘Introduction’, D Porter (ed.), op. cit., note 70 above, p. 24.

122 R Porter, ‘Taking histories, medical lives: Thomas Beddoes and biography’, in Shortland and Yeo (eds), op. cit., note 2 above, pp. 216–17.

123 Exceptionally, Dr W B Berry of Queenstown served on the Redwater Commission of 1883 that dealt with redwater fever, a very contagious but endemic cattle disease (D Gilfoyle, ‘Veterinary science and public policy at the Cape Colony, 1877–1910’, DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 2002, p. 57).

124 A467/88, address.

125 See E B van Heyningen, ‘Cape Town and the plague of 1901’, Studies in the history of Cape Town, vol. 4, Cape Town, University of Cape Town, History Workshop, 1984, pp. 66–107, for a discussion of the most extreme incident resulting from this kind of attitude in the forced removal of the African population in Cape Town to the Cape Flats following the outbreak of plague.